


a rung called love

by lovebot (bluelions)



Series: bewitched [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Witches, Coming of Age, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, yaku is... a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluelions/pseuds/lovebot
Summary: The ladder towards adulthood is tall and teetering for witches like Kuroo and Yaku. Hazard warning: a rung called love is not included.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Yaku Morisuke
Series: bewitched [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019764
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	a rung called love

**Author's Note:**

> a prequel to "bewitched" but this can be read standalone! for those who have read it, several references are made towards it <3

The time before and after Yaku enters Kuroo’s life is the difference between shark-infested waters and the drawback of the sea right before a tsunami hits. He feels its distinction the same way he runs a finger down a scar imprinted on unblemished skin. It doesn’t haunt Kuroo, not anymore. He just wishes he could grab someone’s hand and let them see this vacation hellscape, a Hollywood-esque reality only magic could replicate in absence of Yaku Morisuke.

Set yourself adrift, unanchored, shiver as the slick skin of Megalodon tease your ankles, your back, your wrists where your pulse knocks and begs to be invited into its jaw.

Stand upon the shore, make a burial ground of the sand for your feet, and find that in the silence of waves rearing up, you and your prayers, your wishes, are alone.

Kuroo has found those are feelings he’ll bear alone. The hand of a witch is a weapon he’d honed for nurturing, and in his future, he’ll find feline friends and foliage to attest. Besides, he’s already acknowledged he’s been fated to drown one way or another, by gods or other serrated edges.

**SECOND YEAR, TOKYO WITCHING ACADEMY, THE GREAT HALL**

The opening ceremony is a weeping livewire. Kuroo tries to sit still while his brain is assaulted by pressure and the dull drone of their headmaster’s speech. Someone from the back left of the room has a particularly nauseating presence that takes grip of the base of Kuroo’s skull, but he manages. Most of the second and third years have grown accustomed to this, it’s the first years who twitch and squirm in their seats. They’re not used to being so physically aware of their peers, their competition.

There’s a flashy demonstration of illusions by the professors and then they’re finally released in neat rows.

Kuroo and Yaku, still nameless to each other, make eye contact as they head for their homerooms. His chest caves in. Yaku’s magic pierces easily through the crowd and harpoons Kuroo, surging molten hot over him. The thorned and barbed sensation of his magic is characteristic of a transfer student, but Kuroo grasps at him anyway, trying to map the shape of his presence. For the first and last time, they hold each other as the moon does the tides, gently.

_ He’s strong _ , Kuroo notes. Someone bumps into him and pushes him along to keep up with the rest of the class, and they lose sight of each other. The thread snaps.  _ Did he think I was too? _

**SECOND YEAR, TOKYO WITCHING ACADEMY, SECOND FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY, A NARROW HALLWAY LEADING TO THE RESTROOMS**

“Still upset about the exam placements?” Yaku sneers.

Kuroo is still upset about a lot of things, not just Yaku’s public dethroning of Kuroo from first rank. He’s upset with the skies that tore open and spilled rain this morning when his laundry was out to dry. He’s upset that his partner for his potions project has been sick all week. He’s upset that Yaku doesn’t see him as a threat despite attacking him first.

“Are you sure you’re not the one who’s worried? You really love bringing it up,” Kuroo hisses back. “Wring it out while you still can.”

The past four months have been nothing but endless battles. The difference in difficulty between last year’s courses and this year’s is staggering, and no doubt the rest of the class has grown a little tougher and craftier. Exams one week, career planning the next, then an endless amount of possible requirements and certifications and applications and apprenticeships are thrown in for “further consideration”. Kuroo feels like the entire community of witches has come to bear witness to their dogfight with empty eye sockets and even emptier nostalgia.

Yaku Morisuke has not made this any easier. Any attempt Kuroo has made at progressing with his studies, Yaku meets him stride for stride.

“What’s your problem with me?” Yaku takes a step closer and the boot of his heel against stone echoes. “Breaking news, Kuroo, but some people are just as good as you. Some people are  _ better  _ than you.”

A ray of daylight from the windowed ceiling slices across Yaku’s face and paints colors Kuroo’s never seen before.

“You’ve just got an ego I’d love to shred,” Kuroo snarls, and the energy between them pulses in response.

Yaku’s magic doesn’t grate his senses anymore, not in the literal sense. The waves of time and Tokyo air have lapped at it until it’s turned smooth and alabaster, not soft but stately and weighty beneath Kuroo’s touch. There is no give. Kuroo could wade through it all and… 

Kuroo wants to strangle him.

Something sharp bolts up their spines and they freeze. Two ghostly serpents emerge from the yellowed floor, hissing and iridescent. A yelp is forcibly trapped in Kuroo’s throat.  _ Librarians. _

“Students! Please mind your volume,” they reprimand, “lest you lose your tongue the rest of your day.”

A snake each coils around Kuroo and Yaku’s ankle in warning before phasing back into the ground with a small burst of blue. They glance up at each other. Yaku leaves without another word.

**THIRD YEAR, TOKYO WITCHING ACADEMY, TUNNEL VISION**

Yaku Morisuke is a dangerous witch. He is proficient and exemplary in nearly every iteration of magic there is, yet he turns his blade and finds the most human part of Kuroo to stab.

On this empty field gone ablaze stand a dying man and his muse.

“Done yet, Kuroo?”

Flames dance along Yaku’s fingertips, waiting to be shot through the air and find a place to bury in Kuroo’s flesh. His neck, his left hip, and both shoulders have already been made home to his fury. Kuroo’s only response is to slam his open palm into the air and invoke a meteor strike upon him.

Yaku saw it coming, as he does most things, and he shields most of the damage. It leaves a pool of molten hell at his feet, and Kuroo can’t help but crack a smile at the monstrous sight. His cape billows out behind him, red as the glow in his eyes.

Kuroo doesn’t quite remember when his feelings began to morph from something borderline destructive to affection of all things. Yaku, who has yanked the rug out from under him too many times, was not unlike Kuroo in this slow crawl towards “the real world”. Their blood, ancient and fortified over generations of well-to-do witches, is identical, but Kuroo has begun to think he’s of a dying breed.

He almost wants to apologize for pushing Yaku this far. He wants to apologize for the petty fights in the courtyard and the namecalling and the hours spent studying and practicing they’ve pushed each other into. Kuroo isn’t sorry, he’s just selfish and longing for a warmth that doesn’t scorch a warning into his skin.

Here on this middle rung is a dangerous place, and there is no time for nurturing the soft dove fluttering in his ribcage.

**PRESENT DAY, TOKYO, KUROO’S HOUSE, THE PORCH**

Kuroo watches the sky melt like candy through a half-lidded gaze. His shift at the apothecary ran far too many hours longer than it should have, and now his bones ache with the kind of weariness meant for his deathbed. He lies on the wood, spread out, and listens to the gentle chatter of the colony of cats that made home to his backyard.

He dozes off until something  _ thwaps  _ his forehead.

“You’re not allowed to fall asleep out here,” Yaku says. His voice is dreamy in his muddled state.

“Mm, yeah,” Kuroo responds half-heartedly.

Yaku bats at his face again. “I’m hungry,” he punctuates.

Kuroo’s head rolls to the side and he stares at Yaku; brown tabby, dark eyes, a red ribbon around his neck, tied carefully by Kuroo. His magic is sealed away beneath the curse. Kuroo has forgotten what it felt like.

“Alright, alright, I’m getting up.”

_ Did they make it? _ Kuroo wonders as he slips back inside. He’s vowed not to bring up old feelings but he can’t help the way it has seeped into the walls of his home. Yaku is but an animal right now, and one day he’ll be cured and leave.

Kuroo flicks a flame into the stove and it ignites. He runs on autopilot, lets the tongs and the pan and the raw fish from the fridge be pulled onto the counter.

“Don’t burn it this time.”

“How about you cook for a change?”

Is he supposed to reach out for Yaku before that happens? His last memories of Yaku are either cold and stone-faced across their graduating class or white-hot emotion.

Yaku has planted himself on the kitchen counter to supervise his meal being cooked. His eyes narrow suspiciously when Kuroo approaches him.

“What are you doing?”

He gently takes his paw into his hand, small and warm in his palm, and sees past the curse’s blockade. Yaku in the flesh sits on his counter, the pink line of his mouth slanted in confusion. His hair is longer, his jaw sharper, and his shoulders are strong beneath his cape. The wonder of growing older strikes Kuroo.

Yaku shakes his paw out of his tender grip and the line breaks. Kuroo blinks.

“You’re getting weirder every day, I swear,” Yaku mutters.

Kuroo laughs from his chest and scritches him beneath the chin, exactly the way Yaku loves and claims to hate.

They haven’t made it, is what Kuroo decides, but not because he has a penchant for bottling things up in pretty glass. Years and years will pass of hauling themselves up the same goddamn ladder until eventually they too morph into the same wizened, patronizing old witch everyone turns out to be. This is the way it is. This is the way they began and the way they will end.

**Author's Note:**

> when will "bewitched" actually continue? idk i've been thinking about it since may.....
> 
> thanks for reading! you can find me on twitter [@softresetter](https://twitter.com/softresetter) if you'd like <3


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